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Charles, have you read any of the many memorial articles about the victims?A clarinet teacher, a computer science graduate, radio Djs, a choir singing sheriff's deputy's son, a conservation trust worker, a mortuary employee, a Shazam employee, a classical pianist, a community organizer, a sound engineer, a filmmaker, a psychology grad student, school teacher, art therapist, a DJ, , an MIT grad lawyer, and several artists and musicians. I haven't read all of the obits, but i suspect the list of "real jobs" and accomplishments would grow. It's possible to get your point across without maligning the dead.

I can think of jazz musician Louis Armstrong who worked shoveling filthy coal in New Orleans in a cart pulled by a mule...he played clubs on the weekends and at night. He worked. Worked his butt off to support himself and create an opportunity to make music.

Be an artist as much as you like..but why should society support your lazy butt with disability payments you don't deserve....with food stamps to buy steak while working people pay wages to buy pasta?

Plenty of people work responsibily while trying to also be artists. They don't live in illegal spaces full of drugs...they don't lie to get free money from the givernment...they don't collect money to pay for needed fixes and then party in Bali.

Name them. One by one. And explain how they paid for their rock-n-roll lifestyle.

See recent LA Times article about this fire and eviction issues..one Joy Newhart. Lived in a different illegal artsy warehouse in Bay Area....article says she lives "solely" on $1200 in disability payments monthly...but she is a "video choreographer" or some crap.

How do you afford your rock and roll lifestyle?

List each of the 35 adult victims....and determine that question. Follow the money.

It is a wild accusation to suggest Child Protective Services--which had been at the warehouse recently--may have been paying for the hotel room where those children were safe the night of the party?

It is a wild accucation to suggest this fanatically self-centered narcissist Derick Almeda probably took money from whatever source he could? Which could include foood stamps? Unemployment insurance? Certainly the earned income credit with three kids!!!

It is a wild accusation to say Derick and his wife likely weren't officially reporting all their income? When there are people saying they grew pot and partied in Bali? So here i am like...they probably didn't, er, report all their income?

Given the spectacular hoarding and the narcissism....is it wild to suggest Derick is bipolar? And if he is bipolar....he probably tries to get SSI? Get a fat monthly check?

THE FACT THAT THESE ARTSY VICTIMS of their own bad lifestyle choices suck off public assistance to party all day is actually one of the most pressing and nationally relevant aspects of this story...and none of it is wild or off base. This is how it works. This is how you fund artsy bumhood.

This is how you afford a rock-n-roll lifestyle. Taxpayers underwrite all of it. You don't want this topic to get traction...the whole national arts "scene" lives off social welfare intended for people who NEED it but it funds bums who want to party and avoid real work.

>>The NYT is ... even asking the public to suggest avenues of investigation.
>>I found this when I followed up: http://www.nytimes.com/2016/12/08/us/the-oakland-fire-delving-into-what-happened-and-why.html

To all the people in these comments so callously disparaging the artists, the dead, the warehouse spaces, the partiers, etc as being immature children scared of the "Real World":

Just because you yourself don't understand the value of local art and art spaces, it doesn't mean it's not meaningful and important.

Think of your favorite musician. They could have started their career in an art-house just like Ghostship or the dozens of others here in the Town, and squares just like you probably mocked them endlessly: "Stop pursuing this childish music stuff and get a real job!" Thank god they didn't listen.

Don't drag us all down to your level of banality. Go back to the suburbs if you want a predictable, "sensible" lifestyle where everyone has a "grown-up" job, a cubicle, a white picket fence, a two-car garage, a nice big TV to watch the football game. You keep working on the GDP, we'll keep making music and art that brings people joy. Both are important.

It is so haaaaard to "survive" and be an artist without stealing water and electricity and getting free food, free Obama phone, free medical care...

Art is not a neccessity. Like FIREMEN are a neccessity. Was a GROWN UP not in charge at the mayor's office? How were they short 92 firemen...short of building inspectors....the building literally didn't appear in the inspection database for fire inspections.

Yet complaints including fire safety complaints were made. Were these complaints buried to protect the precious fringe artists and the "scene?" Even at the level of city officials and inspectors...where were the GROWN UPS??!!

People who suck the tit of the system and don't want to work but would rather play and be intoxicated all day at taxpayer expense.... people who lack gratitude and humility and buy expensive foods with food stamps and laugh about how they are getting over...these are the bad examples who make taxpayers think that social welfare programs just fund irresponsible lifestyle choices and they are reluctant to fund these.

Not one voice in these many threads has so far stood up and DENIED my assertion that Derick Almena and his wife probably played the system and collected social welfare...how many of the 35 adults who died were collecting SSI and food stamps and Section 8 and LET US NOT FORGET unemployment insurance benefits.

Ooooh. I am looking so hard for a real job. But first....RAVE PARTY!!!!

How were those three kids at a hotel the night of the fire??? CPS was probably footing the bill. One way or another, taxpayers have been funding these parties and "artists" and bad lifestyle choices since the Lyndon B. Johnson administration.

And the very people in the system whose job it is to be grownups and crack down on stupidity kept looking the other way. Tolerance of bad lifestyle choices and funding those choices permeated the whole system.

Ladies, Gentlemen and all other gender non-identifiers, in the the person of JohnNoMoniker, I give you, what I am now calling the the alt-left.

Every bit a poisonous as the alt-right and it's figure head the new POTUS. Every bit as self centered, name calling and uninterested in solutions.
Swaddled in the the fuzzy language of "safe spaces", "complicated existence", holding these concepts as dear only to themselves, granting none to others.

BTW, forget food stamps, SSI and all the rest of those... Let's talk about those who decry how corrupt society is, scream for it's destruction while drinking clean water from a tap, using electric power from the wall for their Macbooks, iPhones, DJ dance parties and just in general enjoying the benefits of a non-primative, brutish existence free from large meat eating animals that would doubtless enjoy them as a a snack. All the while behaving as if anonymized destruction wrapped in outrage improves things.

"Or the outlier, bad-actor art-scene figureheads youre on watch" -stated right there that the writer is holding people like Almena accountable. did y'all read the article before you flipped a lid?

but a lot of you are missing the underlying point. our society does not promote non-profitable artistic creation, thus resulting in cities' lack of funding and support to those that want to dedicate their lives to artistic endeavors. resulting in places like the ghost ship...that said, if you are going to create a warehouse space, it should be done with more precautionary and safety measures. but i think the writer is saying to attack those in control of the system. those who are not thinking about providing affordable housing for creatives...and not just creatives, either. lack of funding and housing for homeless, veterans, service workers. it starts even beyond the city of oakland. it's a cultural mindset and art is on the back burner to retail development, big $ housing, and other corporate greed. but, for oakland, a city known to be "progressive", it should be a point of emphasis for those running the city to develop housing for all it's people...artists, low paying workers, minorities.

Their passion....paid for with SSI and food stamps. Government assistance programs in the US are the biggest arts endowment program in world history.

Don't want to work? Get a malady...get SSI...and eat, drink, be merry...screw all day...call yourself an "artist."

I want to know...to paraphrase the song....how did they afford this rock and roll lifestyle? If rent was 6k and people paid 500 a month then 12 people could cover rent. And that was BEFORE admission fees for raves...none of it taxed...none of it counted as income against food stamps.

This was irresponsible lifestyle choice funded by the taxpayers...and it isn't just thus one time and place. This is how being an artsy bum works. This is how some oeople don't work and eat lobster and people who work buy noodles.

I currently have a friend that had Dissociative Disorder and I need to get her help ASAP. I live in the bay area but do not know who to get it from and how to contact her family about it; right now as I am typing it is 1:45Am and I just got off the phone with her, she is drunk and possibly might be in shock and I have no idea where she is. I'm hoping she wakes up tomorrow and calls me.

I need help, if anyone knows any professional Psychotherapist in the bay area that works with DID: please contact me in a comment reply here or message me immediately.

Backlash on communities after that community has been traumatized is so common place that it's nearly logical in some warped out dimension where landlords and mortgage brokers decide who gets to own more gravity. I've lived in wild and weird housing most of my life (I'm 41). I feel like a broken record, but what if it was so fucked up expensive to live here? I grew up here, I can barely afford to live here, I'm a dedicated healthcare worker, and I can't see how anyone with two eyes and a life outside the suburbs could blame a bunch of people for giving up on creature comforts (who needs a stovetop anyways??) to pursue their passion. I know that arts and gentrification are intimately bonded, and I've done more than a fair share of bitching about it, but living like that, pursuing art with passion that makes it ok to be cold at night, survive on ramen and create, it's noble. I appreciate it so much.